Obama on MTP: 'Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem'

That was the title of a now-famous essay by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein:

Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Here is President Obama on Meet the Press today, taped Saturday:

Mr. Obama told host David Gregory that "the only thing I would caution against…is I think this notion of, 'Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate.' And that's just not true. I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic Party, warts and all, and certain me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first."

That the standoff persists, he said, "is an indication of how far certain factions inside the Republican Party have gone where they can't even accept what used to be considered centrist, mainstream positions on these issues."

13. Of course we've seen it all along,

and he probably has too. But I'll bet part of his first term agenda was to establish a record of Republican obstructionism so he could rally more people (in Congress) to support his policies in the second. At least, that's what my inner optimist hopes.

30. maybe he waited until after the election to get tough

57. You have to cut him some slack here

He is still trying to broker a deal, and hopefully one that doesn't fuck over Social Security. Calling them Teabilly Fucksticks right now will not get them to the table, although I honestly don't see the GOP coming to the table at all. Once we go off the cliff, perhaps they'll be a bit more willing to deal.

8. Obama is now doing what he promised Boner he would do...

President Obama has threatened House Speaker John Boehner that if no deal is struck on the “fiscal cliff,” he will use his Inaugural address and State of the Union speech next month to blame Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal. ... he president is emboldened by his reelection and eager to extract more concessions from Boehner than he was willing to accept during last summer’s debt limit talks.

It's beginning to look like President Obama is going to get all Samuel L. Jackson (sans F-bombs) in the GOP's grill...

47. Reagan was an actor playing the part of a president.

14. From the same interview:

"And does the Democratic Party still have some knee-jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic Party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party.

But generally if you look at how I've tried to govern over the last four years and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda."--PBO

The President's own past statements perpetuated the false equivalence with the GOP. This most recent statement continues this. Yes one must take the President's words in context, but even now he can't unequivocally BE A DEMOCRAT.

What "knee-jerk ideological positions" does the Democratic Party support? NAME them! To the extent that anyone in the Democratic House/Senate are unreasonable, are they covertly/overtly racist? Contemptuous of the poor? women? minorities? LGBTs? Like the coalition of those that oppose you and a DEMOCRATIC agenda?

THEY are the ones opposing you! The Democratic Party has no equivalent in the rank and file or in the platform! Hold no quarter!

17. Thanks for pointing this out for those of us who didn't see the interview.

I kind of knew he would try to "balance out" a comment as straighforward as the one above, and I wasn't wrong, unfortunately. I just skimmed an article on the aol start screen ( a straight news article) that casually mentioned that the President said that he had agreed to cut social security benefits. Supposedly he said this in this interview with Gregory. It wasn't in quotes though. So maybe you or others who saw it could chime in on that.

19. Maybe he's

"And does the Democratic Party still have some knee-jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic Party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party."

42. you first.

45. LMFAO-- right.

In an interview in which the main line of questioning centered around whether or not he was willing to 'talk tough to seniors' and work with the GOP on entitlements-- an interview in which he held up chained CPI as his big olive branch; his "look how willing to compromise I am"... he was referring to the Democratic Party's 2nd Amendment nuts. Whoever THEY are.

63. Where do you get the 2nd Amendment and the NRA from all that?

The "knee-jerk" quote was just an aside to say some Democrats are as bad as the GOP, but the GOP overall is worse.
It's the rest of his talk that should make everyone nervous...

OBAMA: ..."I also have an obligation to the American people to make sure that the entire burden of deficit reduction doesn't fall on seniors who are relying on Medicare....I offered to make some significant changes to our entitlement programs ... "

GREGORY: "Would you commit to that first year of your second term getting significant reform done?" ...

OBAMA: ..."One of the fallacies I think that has been promoted is this notion that deficit reduction is only a matter of cutting programs that are really important to seniors, students and so forth. That has to be part of the mix, but what I ran on and what the American people elected me to do was to put forward a balanced approach. To make sure that there's shared sacrifice....

Looking at the entire transcript, he's clearly referring to Social Security and Medicare. He talks about the "entire" burden not falling on seniors who rely on Medicare and continues to peddle the same garbage about "shared sacrifice" and "balance". Let's not forget Pelosi's sudden reversal on the chained CPI and how it's now a way to "save" and "strengthen" Social Security. She came out and promised to deliver the House for such a proposal. That didn't happen without White House prodding.

27. Check out Mitch McConnell's response.

Indeed, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was not pleased with Obama’s attack, releasing a statement almost immediately after the interview aired. “While the president was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.

48. Welcome to DU, jinx1!

Glad you're here! Good question! We all need that help! The only time I can even vaguely remember that the answer would have been "yes" is some commemorative thing upon the passing of some public figure or other. Completely non-essential, and utterly irrelevant regarding the hard realities of policy-making and law-making.

What I remember in detail is this wall of "No" that we kept banging into, with untold numbers of attempts to break through that wall, or at least bore a hole in it. These assholes were HORRIBLE. Just take a moment to imagine what kind of nay-saying the enemy would say if OUR side did nothing but turn up its collective nose at ANYTHING the President wanted.

And we all know why, don't we? Because the republi-CONS are being led around by their own noses by the teabaggers. And what pumps through their veins, in far greater numbers and proportions, is racism.

It seems there's one really remarkable thing about racism: its staying power. We supposedly declared it over and done with about - how long ago? From somewhere in the middle of the 19th Century? Isn't that somewhere around 150 years ago? Haven't we been able to get over it by now, as a country? Why is this still a problem? Why is it still an issue in this country? What's been done to perpetuate, or even reinforce it so effectively? And what HASN'T been done to bring it to a complete, stale, closed-and-locked, body's-gone-cold, end-of-discussion END? What HASN'T been done to make sure this is SECURELY and in TOTAL FINALITY over and done with? Dead and buried and just a bad memory? Why has racism been allowed to continue? Actively? Passively? Both, probably?

We need to look at this seriously, and ask ourselves some pretty serious self-examining questions, seems to me. WHY is racism still a problem? Why have we not been able to conquer it? If a generation is about 20 - 25 years, how many generations is that since Abraham Lincoln's day? One hundred and 47 years works out to five to seven generations. Give or take. I mean, it just seems to me that it's time we grew up as a nation.

All I see when I observe teabaggerism - whether it's what they're saying on radio/tv/cable or writing in editorials, books, and blogs, or shouting and stamping their li'l feet at rallies, protests, and town hall meetings and hoisting their poorly spelled protest signs - is a bunch of adult-size three-year-olds throwing temper tantrums, because mom or dad didn't take them to Kiddie Land today. I see a bunch of spoiled brats yelling and screaming in the cereal aisle at the store, because mom wouldn't buy them all the Count Chocula they demanded. They embarrass me as an American, and humiliate themselves. These people has insisted they're not growing up at all, stuck on a world view that extends no farther out from them than the tips of their noses (or pot-bellies, whichever is larger).

We weren't born yesterday, as a nation, or as a reunited nation. We should be asking ourselves seriously, as a nation, isn't it time we grew up?

56. Never, but the media is owned by conservatives, so we have to go to the UK to find out...

Rush said they wanted Obama to fail. McConnell said publicly their goal was that Obama not be re-elected. They have carried out their plan almost perfectly.
...The 15 Republicans were in a sombre mood as they gathered at the Caucus Room in Washington, an upscale restaurant where a New York strip steak costs $51.

Attending the dinner were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Others present were former House Speaker and future – and failed – presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and the Republican strategist Frank Luntz, who organised the dinner and sent out the invitations.

49. he should have said that the day he was inaugurated

52. Spot on, and EXACTLY what I have been saying for YEARS and YEARS in this forum

I will go one step further: The republican Party is not able to exist as a political party without its obvious repressionist tactics and illegal actions. Fortunately, most people in this country have seen the light, and 2012 has brought out the first true demonstration of how out of touch the rethugs are. President Obama should not compromise one iota and should go for EVERYTHING; the people will ensure that no GOP compromise muddies up the works.